Dvar Torah Parshat Toldot 2008 – 5768 דבר תורה פדשת תולדות

Yitzchak’s people dug wells for water and when they were successful their surrounding neighbors suddenly started to claim: LANU HAMAYIM, “…the water is ours…”. (Gen. 26,20) These people did not dig and did not work to find water. They left it up to Yitzchak’s people to do. When they were successful suddenly the neighbors woke up to claim the wells as their own.

History repeats itself. For centuries very few Jews lived in the land of Israel. They had been chased our, exiled and not permitted to rebuild the land. All the conquerors had the land for generations upon generations and no one did anything with it.

The Jews started to return and began building the land. They made a prosperous country from desolate land. They made the desert bloom. They built industries and the land of Israel suddenly became a desirable spot. Now the neighbors of today like the neighbors of old started to claim that it is their’s. When the Jews were not developing the land no one did and no one claimed it as their homeland. Only after the Jews returned and built it up, only then did enemies spring up and claim, “The water is ours, the land belongs to us”. History has a peculiar way of repeating itself.